Kristopher Sharp – who spent years in Texas foster care – opens up about his experience and praises a recent federal court ruling in M.D. v. Perry calling for specific reforms to the state’s child welfare system. The case was brought by national advocacy organization Children’s Rights and Texas co-counsel Haynes and Boone, LLP and Yetter Coleman LLP.

In her Dec. 17 ruling against Texas’ foster care system, U.S. District Judge Janis Jack was scathing. For more than two decades, she wrote, the state has created a situation where “children have been shuttled throughout a system where rape, abuse, psychotropic medication, and instability are the norm.”

I was one of those children.

I was born in Dumas, deep in the heart of West Texas. I entered the foster care system shortly before my 10th birthday. My mother was an addict — meth being her drug of choice —…